Monday, March 31, 2008

jet lag margaritas and teeth

80% proof MargaritasFriday night we went over to Sam’s and drank rather too much alcohol. We went for dinner with Kate and her husband.

Sam met Kate in hospital last year when she was having metal re-enforcements fitted in her neck. Kate has had a dreadful time by all accounts after having a miscarriage and loosing twins…One problem after another delayed her recovery and she’s still using a stick. The point is, she’s always able to be happy and bright despite it. Some people, you just know can cope with stuff. It’s such a great skill to have.

The night started off relatively civilised, but when we thought everything was winding down (Sam having just arrived from the US, we thought would want to get an early night) – Sam asked if we wanted a drink… we all assumed it was going to be coffee.

But it was margaritas… if you know a night is going to end with margaritias, you pace yourself. This was rather sprung on us and the results weren’t great.

I went to give George his late night feed (we’d left him to sleep in Sam’s room) and instead of me sending him to sleep, he sent me to sleep and I wandered back in bleary eyed half an hour later.

Lisa mixed the drinks and ended up being sick the following morning. It was the first time she’d been really drunk since having George.

Kate decided that adding 2 shots of 40% proof alcohol meant that the final drink would be 80%. She seemed unconvinced by the question “what happens if you have 3 shots?”.

Chestnuts, jetlag and Jim BowenOn Saturday we went to Russ and Pietro’s and drank rather too much alcohol. We’d spent the day slowly recovering from Friday night, but when we arrived, there was a double-sized bottle of wine on the table, and it seemed rude to refuse.

On TV in the background during the meal (I must remember to cook Brussels sprouts with Chestnuts – it’s a really nice combination) was Jim Bowen’s 100 greatest party hits.

Each very obvious gay anthem was introduced by the presenter (who hadn’t been on TV for 20 years to my knowledge – since the darts-related crap TV quiz Bullseye died a long overdue death). He looked somehow sadly desperate sat at a table in a mock up of a rather unsuccessful party at which he appeared to be the lone guest. He introduced each music video with a dreadful joke, underlining if emphasis were needed why he’s no longer on primetime TV.

Sam was with us. She doesn’t recognise the concept of jet lag – stating: “nobody suffers from Rave-lag when they’ve had a night out. It’s not jet-lag, it’s just laziness”

Egyptian chimneysOn Sunday we had Pauline and Phil and Sam around for dinner – and drank rather too much alcohol..I got a slightly deeper insight into Billy’s lifestyle on Sunday (He turned up in his van with a fibreglass elephant on the roof which he refuses to add any kind of information about his building work to – because then the elephant would be advertising and that would destroy the integrity of the elephant).

Phil is a chimney sweep, gardener and acting extra and he and Billy have decided to create a side-business sweeping chimneys while dressed as Egyptian pharaohs.

This is Billy’s idea, and I’d like to say there’s method in this madness. However, there quite explicitly and purposefully is no method whatsoever. It’s just madness, and Billy will resist with every fibre of his being any attempt to create or discern method.

His perspective as he explained it is that life is strange and purposeless – and that as a kind of protest against the purposes other people invent for their lives, he intends to fill his with random nonsense.

His hope, as he explained it to me on Sunday is that at the end of his life, he will be taken from our universe like a laboratory mouse being removed from an experiment - by whoever it is that has devised the strange and pointless mazes that our lives consist of. He’s not very confident that this will happen, but he is very certain that it’s a belief system with as much validity as anyone else’s and that because it doesn’t really matter what you do, you might as well do something nobody else has tried and do it with all the energy you have.

Like making fibreglass elephants or sweeping chimnies dressed as a Pharaoh.

Dipping things in chocolateWe did a traditional roast on Sunday – roast beef, potatoes, parsnips, cabbage, sweed, you name it (I had a nut loafy thing made from the breadcrumbs of the loaf we’d bought on Saturday to make the cheese and pickle sandwich I needed to get over my hangover).

Anyway, over the past few weeks, I’ve been starting to dip things in chocolate…. And it’s great – just warm a bowl over a pan of simmering water and drop the strong dark chocolate into it, and you can dip strawberries, raspberries, orange segments, and even mint leaves to create lovely home made sweets.

They always taste absolutely great – and just need a few minutes in the fridge to solidify.

It takes just a few minutes, but tastes fantastic. I think it’s because the chocolate is so thin, it melts as soon as you bite into it.

What’s more, it’s virtually fat free.

Well, OK, it isn’t. but we did have six people and only used two bars of chocolate, so that’s only really 33 grams each…. Not too much for a pudding, and the rest is fruit…

George’s first toothOn Saturday morning I found George’s first tooth. It’s been getting sharper and pointier since then – making it impossible to comfort him without him biting chunks out of you. Which he thinks is terribly funny, of course.

He’s sleeping through the night more and more often – despite the fact that we’ve been moving him from house to house over the weekend…

some of the questions I'm grappling with... read on if you want to find out how I cope:

I'm a freelance writer, illustrator and animator, and having just finished my first documentary (on the evolution of sharks) I've now started work on my second (on interstellar travel)... if you want to see how I get on, read on.